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A review by deedireads
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.
TL;DR REVIEW:
Those who loved The Silence of the Girls will love The Women of Troy, its sequel. It offers a powerful look, through the eyes of Briseis, into the aftermath of Troy’s defeat and what it meant for the Trojan women who became slaves.
For you if: You like feminist Greek mythology retellings. I recommend reading The Silence of the Girls first!
FULL REVIEW:
First, thank you Doubleday for the gifted finished copy! I loved The Silence of the Girls, its predecessor, and had a feeling this one would also be for me. I was right. The Women of Troy is gutting, thought-provoking, and intelligently, beautifully written. If you love Greek mythology retellings, this one’s got your name written all over it.
The Women of Troy picks up where The Silence of the Girls ended, picking up Briseis’s story at the end of the Trojan war. Briseis, who was Achilles’s bed slave while he was alive, is now carrying his child and married to one of his former counselors. We also get a few chapters from the perspective of Pyrrhus, Achille’s son, who is grappling (and cracking) with the enormous pressure of upholding a legacy.
Two big things shined for me in this story. First, the way Barker continues to give enslaved women voices, showing the unimaginable things they were expected to just absorb and live with; to go from being Trojan royalty, mothers, daughters — to bed slaves of the men who murdered everyone they loved. We already saw Briseis go through that in The Silence of the Girls, and it’s fascinating (and devastating) to see her attempt to coach her friends through it while also attempting to still protect herself and grapple with the distance her privileged position wedges between them, between her very identity as a Trojan. The gulf widens even as she grasps at it.
The second thing was Pyrrhus’s spiral. Before I read this book, I brushed up on him, and I ended up reading a two-part blog series from Madeline Miller. She says there are two famous depictions of him: the first, and most well known, is Vergil’s portrait in the Aneid of a narcissistic psychopath. The second is from Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which shows him as a child attempting to do right by his father. In this book, Pat Barker seems to have merged these two versions, showing a boy cracking and breaking under the weight of his father’s legacy.
And throughout, of course, we have Pat Barker’s beautiful prose. Read The Silence of the Girls, if you haven’t yet, and then read this!
TL;DR REVIEW:
Those who loved The Silence of the Girls will love The Women of Troy, its sequel. It offers a powerful look, through the eyes of Briseis, into the aftermath of Troy’s defeat and what it meant for the Trojan women who became slaves.
For you if: You like feminist Greek mythology retellings. I recommend reading The Silence of the Girls first!
FULL REVIEW:
First, thank you Doubleday for the gifted finished copy! I loved The Silence of the Girls, its predecessor, and had a feeling this one would also be for me. I was right. The Women of Troy is gutting, thought-provoking, and intelligently, beautifully written. If you love Greek mythology retellings, this one’s got your name written all over it.
The Women of Troy picks up where The Silence of the Girls ended, picking up Briseis’s story at the end of the Trojan war. Briseis, who was Achilles’s bed slave while he was alive, is now carrying his child and married to one of his former counselors. We also get a few chapters from the perspective of Pyrrhus, Achille’s son, who is grappling (and cracking) with the enormous pressure of upholding a legacy.
Two big things shined for me in this story. First, the way Barker continues to give enslaved women voices, showing the unimaginable things they were expected to just absorb and live with; to go from being Trojan royalty, mothers, daughters — to bed slaves of the men who murdered everyone they loved. We already saw Briseis go through that in The Silence of the Girls, and it’s fascinating (and devastating) to see her attempt to coach her friends through it while also attempting to still protect herself and grapple with the distance her privileged position wedges between them, between her very identity as a Trojan. The gulf widens even as she grasps at it.
The second thing was Pyrrhus’s spiral. Before I read this book, I brushed up on him, and I ended up reading a two-part blog series from Madeline Miller. She says there are two famous depictions of him: the first, and most well known, is Vergil’s portrait in the Aneid of a narcissistic psychopath. The second is from Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which shows him as a child attempting to do right by his father. In this book, Pat Barker seems to have merged these two versions, showing a boy cracking and breaking under the weight of his father’s legacy.
And throughout, of course, we have Pat Barker’s beautiful prose. Read The Silence of the Girls, if you haven’t yet, and then read this!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Rape, Violence, and War
Moderate: Ableism